March 19 – Regular People

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go. (Luke 10:1 ESV)

Jesus selected seventy-two people from among those following him. Wait, what? What about those twelve apostle guys? Well, yeah. He had those guys too. There was probably some overlap. But Jesus took thirty-six pairs of followers and commissioned them to go ahead of him. They went into the towns and villages and healed the sick, cast out demons, and preached the powerful approach of the Kingdom of Heaven. In other words, they did what Jesus did.

It’s a really cool and powerful example to me. Jesus picked regular people. Not the religious types he frequently had conflict with. He then sent them into the places that he himself was planning to go and had them begin to do the very thing he was planning to do when he eventually got there. That’s pretty incredible.

Jesus picks regular people. He uses regular folks. It’s easy in America to point to super mega sized churches and their leaders as the modern rockstars of the faith. No doubt about it, many of them are doing astounding things in their communities. But I love the idea that Jesus held a massive schoolyard pick one day and chose seventy-two regular dudes to go do what he was about to do.

That all has a pretty clear implication to me about what we should be up to. We should be going to places and taking about Jesus. We should share his message, his love, and his power in those places. We should pray for the sick. We should believe Jesus to make the difference. We should preach the Kingdom of Heaven. We should believe Jesus to invite them to be a part.